Opening of the Charles Ives Studio

A permanent exhibition of the composer’s actual Redding, CT studio will open to the public for the first time.

View of the recreated Charles Ives Studio in the Academy’s galleries. (Photograph by Martin Solarte)

“I cannot imagine a better recreation of the Ives study. Stepping in there was very emotional for me. I felt as if I were back in the Redding house.” -Charles Ives Tyler

On March 6, 2014, the newly recreated Charles Ives Studio and accompanying exhibition will open in the galleries of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City.

The studio is a faithful replica of the room originally located on the ground floor of the Ives home in Redding, CT, where the renowned American composer Charles Ives worked for the last forty years of his life. It was there, on the studio’s modest upright piano, that Ives composed and finished several of his major works, including Three Places in New England, The Fourth Symphony, The Second Orchestral Set, The Fourth Violin Sonata, and about 40 songs.

In 2012, Charles Ives’s grandson, Charles Ives Tyler, donated the entire contents of the studio to the Academy for permanent exhibition. The studio had been largely untouched since Charles Ives’s death in 1954, and over 3,000 objects were catalogued and restored, including the studio’s furnishings and double doors, to which Ives himself pinned clippings, photos, and keepsakes. These are now installed in a replica of the studio in the Academy’s third-floor galleries, while an accompanying exhibition explores Ives’s life and work in Redding. It is the Academy’s hope that together these capture the essence of one of our preeminent American composers, whom Leonard Bernstein called, “Our first really great composer … our Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson of music.”

Henry N. Cobb, the Academy’s President, said, “In recreating the Ives Studio and preserving its contents in situ, our goal is to make this important documentary record permanently available to scholars and an interested public.”
The Studio will be open during the Academy’s annual exhibitions and by appointment.

CHARLES IVES STUDIO

Audubon Terrace, New York City
Broadway between 155 and 156 Streets
#1 Train to Broadway and 157 StreetAdmission Free

The Studio will be open during the Academy’s two annual exhibitions each spring.

During the remainder of the year, the Studio may be viewed by appointment. Please contact academy@artsandletters.org.

Charles Ives Studio Credits

ARCHITECT

James Vincent Czajka

HISTORIAN

Vivian Perlis

EXHIBITION CURATOR

Ileen Gallagher

EXHIBITION DESIGN

Poulin + Morris

LIGHTING DESIGN

Melanie Freundlich

HISTORIC RECONSTRUCTION

Robert Strada +
Richard Ward Baxter

The American Academy of Arts and Letters was established in 1898 to “foster, assist, and sustain an interest in literature, music, and the fine arts.” Election to the Academy is one of the highest formal recognitions of artistic merit in this country, and current members are 250 of America’s leading voices in Art, Architecture, Literature, and Music. Each year the Academy awards over 60 prizes, and presents exhibitions of art, architecture, and manuscripts, and readings of new musicals. It is located in three landmark buildings on Audubon Terrace in New York City.

The modernist composer Charles Ives (1874 – 1954) was elected to the Academy in 1946. In 1969, his widow, Harmony Ives, bequeathed to the Academy the royalties to his music. Since then, royalty income has funded over 250 scholarships and fellowships in music composition, including the Ives Living, which gives a promising talent $100,000 a year for two years.